When the occasion will allow of it, Bailly praises with enthusiasm; a noble action fills him with joy; he puts it together and relates it with relish.  This disposition of mind is sufficiently rare to deserve mention.

The day, still far off, when we shall finally recognize that our great revolution presented, even in the interior, even during the most cruel epochs, something besides anarchical and sanguinary scenes:  the day when, like the intrepid fishermen in the Gulf of Persia and on the coasts of Ceylon, a zealous and impartial writer will consent to plunge head-foremost into the ocean of facts of all sorts, of which our fathers were witnesses, and exclusively seize the pearls, disdainfully rejecting the mud,—­Bailly’s Memoirs will furnish a glorious contingent to this national work.  Two or three quotations will explain my ideas, and will show, besides, how scrupulously Bailly registered all that could shed honour on our country.

I will take the first fact from the military annals; a grenadier of the French Guard saves his commanding officer’s life, although the people thought that they had great reason of complaint against him.  “Grenadier, what is your name?” exclaimed the Duke de Chatelet, full of gratitude.  The soldier replied, “Colonel, my name is that of all my comrades.”

I will borrow the second fact from the civil annals:  Stephen de Lariviere, one of the electors of Paris, had gone on the 20th of July, to fetch Berthier de Sauvigny, who had been fatally arrested at Compiegne, on the false report that the Assembly of the Town Hall wished to prosecute him as intendant of the army, by which a few days before the capital had been surrounded.  The journey was performed in an open cabriolet, amidst the insults of a misled population, who imputed to the prisoner the scarcity and bad quality of the bread.  Twenty times, guns, pistols, sabres, would have put an end to Berthier’s life, if, twenty times, the member of the Commune of Paris had not voluntarily covered him with his body.  When they reached the streets of the capital, the cabriolet had to penetrate through an immense and compact crowd, whose exasperation bordered on delirium, and who evidently wished to perpetrate the utmost extremities; not knowing which of the two travellers was the Intendant of Paris, they betook themselves to crying out, “let the prisoner take off his hat!” Berthier obeyed, but Lariviere uncovered his head also at the same instant.

All parties would gain by the production of a work, that I desire to see most earnestly.  For my part, I acknowledge, I should be sorry not to see in it the answer made to Francis II. by one of the numerous officers who committed the fault, so honestly acknowledged afterwards,—­a fault that no one would commit now,—­that of joining foreigners in arms.  The Austrian prince, after his coronation, attempted, at a review, to induce our countrymen to admire the good bearing of his troops, and finally exclaimed, “There are materials wherewith to crush the Sans-culottes.”  “That remains to be seen!” instantly answered the emigre officer.